That Inaccessible Land: Destination Unknown remix
by TeresaC
Summary: After the events of Revelations 6:8, Kronos has a choice to make.


Summary: After the events of Revelations 6:8, Kronos has a choice to make.

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of Highlander belong to D/PP, not to me. 

This is a remix of Keerawa's story, Destination Unknown.

That Inaccessible Land

_I know it not, O soul, Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us;_

_All waits undreamed of in that region, that inaccessible land._

_-Walt Whitman_

"I am the end of time," he roars, intends it to be the final word, and it is. The submarine base shimmers around him, like the aura just before the quickening. _Victory!_

But no quickening comes. He looks, sees only forest. He whirls - an automatic defensive move - but the forest remains and his hands are empty. "What is this?! Where are you? Face me, you coward!!"

BEAT

-----------------------------------------

The forest seems endless, and looks like Siberia, where Silas dwelled. Kronos trembles with the effort of leashing his fury in order to use his intellect. "Methos!" he calls, his tone laced with falsely friendly menace. "You've done this! Don't think you can mess with my head, brother! I know this is you!"

When only the trees answer, whispering gently, Kronos pauses, his hands falling helplessly to his sides. He watches and waits.

BEAT

-----------------------------------------

"Feeling better now?" asks a voice.

Kronos turns and the forest shifts around him. Now he stands on a path in the forest and ahead of him the path forks. At the fork is a man in a monk's robe with tonsured hair regarding him with pale blue eyes.

Surprise is often the best tactic. Kronos leaps upon the man, his hand going for the throat - but the throat is not there. Now the man stands a few feet to Kronos's left. "I'm here to help you," the man says.

"Who are you?" Kronos asks through gritted teeth, preparing another attack.

"I'm called Darius."

"The priest?" Kronos laughs. "Darius is dead." He strikes again, cobra-fast, but again the man is not there.

"That's right," he says, gently, from behind.

BEAT

------------------------------------------------------

"You cannot injure me," the man calling himself Darius says.

Kronos finds himself standing in the lobby of an old Texas whorehouse. To his left the bar, untended; to his right the plonky piano, unplayed. Empty chairs and tables and stairs to the bedroom floors. The sound of horses' hooves on cobbled stones clatter outside the building. Red velvet couches gleam along the wall, devoid of the lounging women who should be there, awaiting his choice.

"I'm here to help you choose," says Darius.

Kronos makes no joke. He has always prided himself on his ability to see reality with a clarity surpassing that of other men. He is dead. Even Methos couldn't pull off this trick.

His calculating stillness feels ominous. Darius watches warily.

Kronos runs one sword-callused hand along the wooden back of a chair. "MacLeod . . . killed me," he says.

"Yes," Darius answers.

Kronos seizes the chair and hurls it across the room, where it smashes against the bar. "How do I get back?! I'll tear that deceitful, son-of-a-dog limb from limb! We'll watch him try to regenerate _that_!"

"MacLeod?" Darius, asks, eyebrows raised.

"Methos!" Kronos roars. "He did this! He betrayed me. His brother! He played . . . he played us both, he . . ." Kronos pauses, staring into the distance. "He won," he says, sounding surprised.

Kronos stalks to stand almost nose to nose with the priest. "Wherever this is, he'll be here soon, won't he? He could already be here. How do I find him?"

Darius remains maddeningly calm. "Methos isn't here."

"He will be. If Silas doesn't kill him, MacLeod will. Or Cassandra. I know their kind. They won't let him live."

"They already have," Darius says.

"Impossible!"

"Some men know the uses of compassion."

"You don't sell me that dung!" Kronos abandons his attempts to attack the priest, but verbal intimidation is his native tongue and can not be so easily set aside. "You peace-preaching priest who hides on holy ground. You can't know this. There hasn't been enough time."

"Time is different here. Kronos, we're here about you, not anyone else. Considering where you are don't you think this might be the time to evaluate some things about your life?"

Kronos glances involuntarily around the whorehouse, though that isn't what was meant. "Where is this, then?" Kronos has known and rejected countless gods and visions of life after death; Darius's Christ a worthless weakling, new on the scene. But he is somewhere.

"This place is a kind of sanctuary," Darius says. "The scenery is only the altar-cloth. The real substance is inaccessible until you choose."

BEAT

--------------------------------------------

"I'm warning you, priest. Stop doing that!"

Darius has to raise his voice to be heard above the wind. "I'm doing nothing, Kronos. You're doing it. If you stay, you'll learn better control."

Both men stand on an open steppe, rolling grassland to every horizon; immense dome of blue sky above. The wind, unimpeded by any obstacle for a huge portion of the earth, is unrelenting. Darius clutches at his flapping robe.

Kronos throws out his arms, smiling. "I did this."

"As I said," Darius yells, "in time you would learn to . . ."

"Back to Laredo!" Kronos commands, and the scene shifts to a dingy upstairs bedroom of the whorehouse. A cracked and flyblown glass, a bed and thundermug.

"Impressive," Darius says, glancing around. The over-used bed sags in the middle beneath the faded, fringed spread.

Kronos moves his lips, but says nothing aloud. The two men are standing by a fountain in the courtyard of a Roman villa. "Where are the slaves?" Kronos asks, to himself. Before Darius can say anything, Kronos fixes an evil leer upon him and the scene changes yet again. Now they stand in a stone dungeon, iron manacles dripping from the slick walls, barred and stinking cells lining the corridor, and various implements of torture lurking about like sharp-toothed animals waiting for prey. "Are you finished?" Darius asks.

Kronos frowns. "Where are the people? I particularly wanted prisoners."

"This place is only for immortals," Darius answers, eyeing the iron maiden, a man-sized casket with sharpened iron spikes protruding into its interior. "Other people go somewhere else."

"Where?" asks Kronos, for the first time showing interest in something outside himself.

"It isn't given to us to know," says Darius. "I only know what my faith tells me."

Kronos snorts. "Christian faith? What good is that?" He picks up a glass-studded whip and flicks it proficiently, the studs catching the torchlight and casting broken reflections on the walls. From somewhere distant comes a tortured scream. Kronos smiles, and rounds on Darius.

"How do I know you're Darius? You don't feel like an immortal. If this is all illusion, then so are you."

"You don't feel like an immortal either," Darius says. "You have no quickening here; MacLeod took it." Darius's smile is a little less beatific, hinting of a man who has valued conquering and is not disappointed by the outcome of Kronos's fight. "What does it matter who I am? I am your guide."

Kronos brandishes the whip, snapping it close to Darius, taunting. "MacLeod! Somehow, priest, I will get back to him and make him pay. Methos, MacLeod, all of them! I'll find a way. Do you know who I am?"

Darius eyes the whip, but does not flinch. "The real question is, are you the man you wanted to be?"

"Don't talk in riddles!" Kronos snaps the whip again, enjoying even the illusion of power. "Who are you? Why are you here?"

"I have already decided on my own choice. But I have remained to help others make theirs."

"And what choice is that?"

Darius smiles. "I thought you'd never ask."

BEAT

----------------------------------------------------

They stand again in the forest, on the path, before the fork. Kronos scowls as he tries to return them to the dungeon, only to have Darius's power over their scenery trump his own.

Darius gestures down the left-hand path. "You can go back, Kronos, as you requested. But you will be born as a mewling infant, parentless, pre-immortal, and with no memory of this life. You will not get the vengeance you seek."

Kronos says nothing, but narrows his eyes.

"Or," Darius indicates the right-hand path, "you can continue on to your ultimate destination. If you choose to return, you will delay the time of the Gathering and will again have a chance to affect the Game. You can also make different life choices, if you feel there are things you might have done better in your life. Or, you may stay here, and assist others, as I do, before making your choice."

Kronos throws the other man an unreadable look. "What's the ultimate destination?" He peers down the right-hand path.

"I only know what my faith tells me. The Inaccessible Land."

"Your faith! So, you don't really know anything. What use are you?"

Darius shrugs. "I know that no one attains perfection in life. You must decide if the life you lived was as well lived as you would wish, or if you want to try for better before you move on."

Kronos again stands nose to nose with Darius, glaring into the imperturbable ice blue of his eyes. "You think there's your heaven and your hell at the end of that path. And you think I'll end up in hell."

"It is only for you to judge," Darius tells him. "But if you think your life could have been better lived, you may have a second chance."

"Second chance." Kronos spits into the brown earth and turns away. "Second chance! I did nothing wrong! I conquered the world in my youth and I almost did it a second time. I would have, too, had it not been for the thrice-cursed Game. The Game!" He whirls back to Darius. "Answer my questions! Is the Game real?"

"Oh, yes."

"And what is it? The Prize?"

"Limitless power. Control over everything. So I hear."

"So, why haven't you gone back for it? What are you doing here? Sizing up the competition?" Kronos slithers around the still form of Darius. "Or do you think you're ready to go on into the light? I know your story. You were no better than me, at the first."

"I believe in redemption, Kronos. And I care nothing for the Prize."

"Really? No love left for planet Earth, then? Some saint you are. So you won't mind if someone like me goes back and wins it."

"By the time you won it, Kronos, who's to say what you would be like?"

Kronos snorts again. "We both know the answer to that." Kronos swaggers over to the fork, looking thoughtfully down both paths. "I'll wager most immortals coming through your little sanctuary here choose to go back," he says. "They'd be afraid. Afraid that your 'Inaccessible Land' would judge them and consign them to flames. Have you ever thought about that, priest? The only immortals who choose to go on are the ones with no concern about any taint on their souls. So the winner of the Prize will be someone who returned to earth because they had something to fear from judgment. Someone just like me. Ever considered that?"

"So you have chosen to return?"

"I'm going on!" Kronos yells, mania gleaming in his eyes. "Whatever's out there is a new world to conquer. And it's full of people who think they're perfect. Stand aside. I choose the right-hand path."

"May God bless you, my son," says Darius with his head bowed.

Kronos mutters an ancient imprecation against all gods who are not himself as he vanishes down the right-hand path.

BEAT

------------------------------------------------

Darius stands on an empty beach, considering his own choice. The sun dives down in the western sky, casting his shadow far out upon the waves.

He changes his mind.

Silence

In the darkness, a baby starts to cry.

/lj-cut 


End file.
